Fences Review for Masarah

8/14/2019 Fences Review for Masarah

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Of Fences and

Good NeighborsWhat Our Fences

Say about Ourselves

by Masarah Van Eyck

Something there is that doesnt love a wall.

Robert Frost, The Mending Wall

Most of us are familiar with Robert Frosts oft-

quoted phrase good fences make good

neighbors. In many ways, we believe that

fences, borders, and even emotional boundaries help

us to keep order, provide security, and even build unity.

Perhaps more than ever, we consider fences an asset to

national neighborliness; they help us restrict illegalimmigration and drug trafficking, regulate trade and

agricultural policies, and avert terrorist threats.

Yet to conjure Frosts line from his poem The

Mending Wall as a reflection of these values is to mis-

quote and misrepresent his larger message. In the poem

it is, in fact, a neighbor who declares that good neigh-

bors are made by good fences. Frost himself voices

ambivalence on the subject: Before I built a wall, he

muses, Id ask to know/ What I was walling in or

walling out,/ And to whom I was like to give offence.

Treaties in 1825 and 1827 established boundaries between

tribes of the Great Lakes region and allocated to the tribes land

they already occupied. The treaties provided the legal foundation

for the U.S. government to negotiate land cessions. In 1829, the

Ho-Chunk sold a large portion of their land to the United States.

The Ho-Chunk sold the last of their Wisconsin lands in 1837.


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And for some residents of northern Wisconsin, thats a good

thing. Wild animals, of course, heed neither state nor private

boundaries, and this celebrated icon of the northwoods preyed

on animals at twenty-five Wisconsin farms in 2005. Now some

residents are asking who is responsible for building the fences to

keep these publicly cultivated animals off of their private land

More generally, we depend on the Department of Natura

Resources to regulate the use of public resources through, say

fishing and hunting licenses. In once sense, these permits serve

as boundaries themselves, monitoring an individuals access to

our public, and often wild, domain.

Today, more and more Wisconsinites live in places that fal

somewhere between wildlands and urban metropolises, as they

strive to carve out a home that is privatein both senses of the

word. Is it any coincidence that Thomas Jefferson altered the

traditional English phrase life, liberty, and property in the

Declaration of Independence to read Life, Liberty, and the

pursuit of Happiness? If, for colonists, the boundary between

what they ownedseparate and safe from individual or public

handssecured their very happiness, today the white picket

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We encounter fences every daysome decorative and

symbolic, others starkly impenetrable. But rarely do

we take the time to think about what they mean. A

Smithsonian exhibition, Between Fences, scheduled to tour six

rural towns in Wisconsin from September 2007 through July

2008, will prompt visitors to consider the ways in which fences

reflect our philosophies, our lifestyles, and our economies.

How have we defined ourselves, and our environment, by

what we wall in? How do we define others by what we wall

out? The exhibitions assemblage of tools, images, historical lit-

erature andof coursefences, reveals just how central the

fence is to the American landscape.

From the beginning of European exploration and settle-

ment, fences have been instrumental in shaping Wisconsins

identity. Beyond separating livestock from crops, seizing land

from its native inhabitants hinged on the European concept of

private property. Demarcating space and mingling labor

with the land, as John Locke put it, defined a settlers private

property and, by default, his independence.The materials used, however, have varied depending on the

resources and labor available. Unlike in the eastern United

States, where deforestation restricted the use of wood by the

nineteenth centuryand further west where it was naturally

scarcewood has remained a common material for the post

and split-rail fences that encompassed Wisconsin farms.

That didnt stop late-nineteenth-century Danish immigrant

Hans Henningsen of Leon to fashion over 150 fence posts out

of granite, however. Cutting all of the stone using a star drill

and wedges, Henningsen made the postseach weighing on

average 450 poundsas long below ground as above. They still

demarcate the original line fences, the cow lane, and the inte-rior fences of his farm.

By the time Henningsen died in 1899, however, mass pro-

duction machinery had begun to enable the widespread use of

barbed wire, woven wire, and chain link fences, reflecting an

increasingly industrial farm life. Steel posts and wire fencing

have also allowed farmers to quickly and cheaply fence (and

therefore claim) millions of acres of land.

Today, evolving technology and needs continue to shape the

fences we build. Beyond the invisible fences that surround our

yards and gardens, for example, and the electric fences that con-

tain cattle, some residents of northern Wisconsin are finding

themselves constructing new kinds of predator fences to pro-

tect their animals from the burgeoning timber wolf population.

Thanks to a successful forty-year wolf recovery program,

timber wolves have crossed the Minnesota border and made

their home back in Wisconsin as protected wildlife. Their num-

bers have increased from fifty in the 1950s to 500 today, and

just last March the U.S. Fisheries and Wildlife Service delisted

wolves from the federal list of threatened and endangered

species. That means it is once again legal to kill wolves that

threaten livestock or pets.

Danish immigrant Hans Hennigsen carved over 150 fence posts

out of granite using a star drill and wedges in the late nineteenth

century. He stands near a piece of the fence with his wife, Caroline.

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fence continues for many to embody the American Dream.

Yet, as new and extended highways serve as conduits for

greater connection to people, resources, and economic oppor-

tunities, they also erect physical barriers not unlike the prover-

bial railroad tracks of our past. Now former neighbors may

literally be divided on either side of a concrete thoroughfare.

The village of Hales Corners, some fifteen miles from Mil-

waukee, for example, has recently been divided into four sec-

tions by Interstate-894 and highways 100 and 24. The strong

local identity that persists despite these physical barriers, how-

ever, is testament to the fact that community can be defined

and redefined beyond the dictates of walls.

Meanwhile, other places in Wisconsin, such as Sauk City

and Prairie du Sac, are at once seamlessly connected, and yet

preserve their distinct identities. These two townsknown col-

lectively as Sauk Prairie for their geographical settingami-

cably share municipal resources like a police department and

even a school district. And while Oak Street divides the villages

from one another, Water Street, is the main street for bothdowntowns!

Still as Wisconsins population grows, recent changes to the

landscape have philosophically divided some neighbors who

have differing visions for the future. Take, for example, the

growth of private development along shorelines.

While the Public Trust doctrine incorporated into the

Northwest Ordinance of 1787 establishes the navigable waters

in our state as common highways and forever free,1 new lake-

front properties can limit public access to lakes, obstruct views,

and/or change the quality of the waters themselves.

The Chain O Lakes in central Wisconsin, for example, has

seen the number of buildings along its shorelines more thandouble since 1965. In other parts of the state, lakeside devel-

opment is also causing soil erosion and phosphorous runoff

pollution that result in algae blooms and fish kills. Now some

residents believe that the government should protect these

waters (and the fish that live there) with limitations on new

developments. Others feel that the individuals who own the

land have the right to do what they choose with their property.

We continue to relate to our neighbors with our fences

whether personal, national, geo-political, or conceptual.

Beyond privacy and security, todays fences (and fence disputes)

reflect new issues about the protection of land, water, and

wildlife, the regulation of public health and environmental

quality, and the preservation of natural resources for years to

come. However, while erecting new barriers may help us to

secure a more certain future, their construction also requires

as alwaysthat we continue to ask what we are walling out,

and to whom we are like to give offence.

Notes

1. When Wisconsin became a state in 1848, this provision was included in article IX,section 1, of the Wisconsin Constitution.

Birds eye view of Hales Corners before Interstate 894

and Wisconsin Highways 24 and 100 divided the village

into four sections.

HalesCornersHistoricalSociety



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Despite the recent physical

barriers imposed by highway

construction, Hales Corners

retains its local identity.

Hales Corners street crowded

with horses and buggies. The

hotel in this photo is the Neusel,long lost to highway

construction.



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The Smithsonian is coming to a town near you!

Beginning in the fall of 2007, Between Fences, a traveling Museum on Main Street exhibition from the Smithsonian

Institution, will spend six weeks each in Waupaca, Hales Corners, LaFarge, Sauk Prairie, Clear Lake, and Cable. The exhi-

bition will be hosted by small museums, community centers, libraries, and historic sites, which were selected through a com-

petitive application process. Each community will celebrate the Smithsonian coming to town with related events and

programs.

For more information, contact the Wisconsin Humanities Council: 608-262-0706, www.wisconsinhumanities.org.

Birds-eye view of Sauk City in 1883. Sauk

City and Prairie du Sac are collectively known

as Sauk Prairie. The two communities share

municipal resources and a school district.

Birds-eye view of Prairie du Sac, ca. 1870.

The towns of Prairie du Sac and Sauk Prairie

are geographically connected, yet preserve

their individual identities.

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A B O U T T H E A U T H O R

Masarah Van Eyck holds a PhD in

French history from McGill University.

She served as the public scholar to Wis-consins Between Fences tour during its

inception. Research for this essay (and

the accompanying exhibition kiosk) was

conducted with Jessica Becker, program officer at the Wis-

consin Humanities Council.

New bridge dedication in Sauk City, ca. 1920.

The building of the Monona Terrace Community and Convention

Center was a controversial use of Madison shoreline. Private

development along shorelines often divides residents with

differing visions for the future.

PhotobyJohnNondorf

Fences Review for Masarah

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